Michelle Chan Brown was born in London and lived there for a year and her father was in the embassy so they moved immediately to Prague where she lived for two years in the Czech Republic. Starting grewing up in Prague and then afterwards she moved back to the U.S. Washington D.C. and afterwards to Kracow, Poland, then afterwards to Belgrade, Serbia, then afterwards to Moscow and Kiev so it was a long journey of her from her childhood to nowadays.
Michelle graduated from University of Michigan (1999 – 2003) with Bachelor's degree at Comparative Literature and Russian Language Faculty. And then she completed and finished her studies of Master of Fine Arts (MFA) at Poetry FacultyUniversity of Michigan (2005 – 2007)
She starts her career at Pomfret School on Creative Writing Faculty as Director of the Writers' Studio from 2008 till 2011. Later on she tooks part in Summer Fellow at Klingenstein Center at Columbia University's Teachers College in 2012. And makes work experience at Upper School English in St. Stephen's & St. Agnes School (2012-2014). In 2014 her work located in University of Virginia at Poetry Faculty, Young Writers' Workshop. She is Poetry Editor of Drunken Boat, International Journal of the Arts since 2012 till nowadays. And also she works as Creative Arts Fellow - Writer due to Fulbright Program since 2014 till now. She is one of the founder of Kazakhstan-American Poetry Festival "Between the Lines"№
Her first book, Double Agent, was winner of the 2012 Kore First Book Award, judged by Bhanu Kapil. Her second book, Motherland, with Wolves, is forthcoming in 2015. Her work has appeared in Blackbird, Cimarron Review, The Missouri Review, Witness and many other journals and anthologies. A Kundiman fellow and two-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Michelle is poetry editor of Drunken Boat. She lives in Almaty, Kazakhstan, where she is a Fulbright scholar, at work on non-fiction and a third poetry collection.
